malt extract 'X'

[potatoe]

So this cat gives me these two cans, (missing labels), and tells me that they are malt extract, and that I should make beer out of em. I do not know a damn thing about them. I plan on getting my gear ready and just wingin it. I have very little experince with extract brews, however. So I am unsure as to how to prepare for this most mysterious of brew days. Will light and dark extracts look very different? If they are incongruous can I put em together? What kind of shelf life does the stuff have anyhow?

 

[Fatgodzilla]

Mate, take a leap of faith, bung the buggers into your fermenter. Your big problem is whether the malt is hopped or unhopped. Unhopped beer tastes lousy. So take a risk and add hops to about 20IBUs. That way if its hopped malt, the total bitterness won't be bad. After mixing everything, dry hop the brew for aroma. See what comes out. Otherwise without the proper gear and it sounds like you aint got any, luck's a fortune.

 

[david_42]

The older an extract gets the darker it gets. 3-4 years is generally safe, but go ahead an open them now and see what they look like. Dissolve a tablespoon in a cup of hot water & you should be able to tell if they are pre-hopped.

 

[sloppy]

You'll be able to easily taste if it's hopped or nop. I guess taste each can. If it's hopped, ass/u/me that it's roughly correctly bittered for the amount of malt. If not hopped, then that can'll need -- pulling some numbers out of my bunghole -- about 4-5 HBU of hops added at the beginning of the boil.

You can use them both together, regardless of whatever kind each one is.

Assuming they're both not hopped, just dissolve 'em in the biggest amount of water you can boil, and add a oz of 9% northern brewer at 60 minutes, then throw in some cascade or somethin' near the end. Good generic mystery beer. You can't lose.